Rogers Brubaker's Trans
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Eszter Kováts | “Not A Thing?” Rogers Brubaker’s Trans: Gender and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities and Its Relevance for Central and Eastern Europe Eszter Kováts | ents every social justice claim as an evil and depicts itself as savior “Not A Thing?” Rogers Brubaker’s Trans: Gender against the horrific developments in the declining West. and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities and Its Several days prior to the yearly Pride March in 2019, posters were Relevance for Central and Eastern Europe put up all around Budapest, falsely imitating the official Pride post- Rogers Brubaker, Trans: Gender and Race in an Age of Unsettled ers, with the presumable aim of discrediting the organizers and Identities (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2016) distorting LGBT claims. One of the posters stated for instance, that “Love has no race, no gender [depicting the Austrian crossdresser singer Conchita Wurst] and no age” (referring to transageism AND pedophilia at the same time),2 implying that the acceptance of pe- Bionote: Eszter Kováts holds a BA in Sociology, an MA in French dophilia is among the claims of LGBT groups. While Pride organizers and German Studies and in Political Science. She is a PhD student decidedly distanced themselves from these posters, the media out- in Political Science at ELTE University, Budapest. She worked in lets close to the government presented them as veritable posters to the Hungarian Office of the German political foundation Fried- cause outrage.3 rich-Ebert-Stiftung between 2009 and 2019, from 2012 till the end of 2019 she was responsible for the Foundation’s gender program These episodes are far from unique in either Hungary, or the broad- for East-Central Europe. er region, and often involve much higher stakes than mere acts of mockery and discreditation. References to US and UK activism Institute of Political Science, Faculty of Law, ELTE University Budapest serve as reference points for political actors in Central and Eastern [email protected] Europe who aim at stopping developments and preventing changes that are often deemed progressive. MA programs in Gender Studies “I, the undersigned, hereby state that African-American origin and have been de-accredited by government decree in Hungary which identity are an inseparable part of my identity. Because of this I am derided the field’s so-called unscientificity and emphasized its al- especially glad to be able to perform in George Gershwin’s opera, leged responsibility for the proliferation of gender identities. Sim- Porgy and Bess.” This is the statement the crew of the Hungarian ilarly, in a recent interview with the Financial Times, Vladimir Putin State Opera had to sign in April 2019 before their first performance, has stated, refuting the Russian state’s alleged homophobia, that in order to bypass the author’s will that the opera be played by they have nothing against the LGBT community as a whole, but cer- an all-black cast, that caused several days of media attention and tain aspects, like children choosing from five or six genders, seem outrage.1 This can be interpreted as a legally creative solution to a excessive to them. The Bulgarian constitutional court ruled out the condition that would make it otherwise impossible to perform the Istanbul Convention4 as unconstitutional for its use of the word gen- opera in a country where there are literally no Black opera singers. der, and linked its judgement of gender identity to an individual/ But it was - as noted by several Hungarian commentators on both the Left and Right - also a mocking glass towards the identity pol- 2 Suggesting that if gender is a social construct, then age must be too, as understood also by itics focus of social justice activism in Anglo-Saxon countries often transageist activists who identify as being aged differing from their real one, the consequence criticized from liberals and leftists too, but in the Hungarian context, being that sex with someone of whichever age is permitted, thus the conclusion: permission of 124 paedophilia. unfortunately it is mainly thematized by the right-wing government 3 Szilárd István Pap, “Kamuplakátokkal próbálja lejáratni a Budapest Pride-ot a kormánymédia [The Government Media Attempts to Discredit Budapest Pride with Fake Posters],” Merce (July (and its media) within its framework of culture war, in which it pres- 1, 2019). https://merce.hu/2019/07/01/kamuplakatokkal-probalja-lejaratni-a-budapest-pride-ot-a-kor- 1 Shaun Walker, “White Porgy and Bess Cast ‘Asked to Say They Identify as African-American,’” manymedia. The Guardian (April 7, 2019). https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/apr/07/white-porgy-and- 4 The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and bess-cast-forced-to-say-they-identify-as-african-american. domestic violence. Identities Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture / Vol.16, No.1-2 / 2019 subjective choice, disconnected from biological sex.5 And the list legitimacy and the relation of transgender and transracial claims: could be continued. if Jenner can claim to be a woman and ought to be recognized as such, can Dolezal, in the same vein, state to to transgender people There is already an abundance of literature on “anti-gender move- that she is black? Is it a legitimate question or does it do a disservice ments”6 which mainly concentrate on the Catholic Church’s role in transgender people? mobilizing a politically charged discourse against the term gender in CEE. There are a select few scholars who acknowledge the impor- Transracial “is not a case” was a common statement in the ensuing tance of the trans question in the teachings of the Vatican.7 Howev- debates, and this is what Brubaker seeks to address in his volume: er, the explicit links of the partly religious, partly right-wing party the most widespread position being that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman discourses on the presumed threat of “gender ideology” to US (or and should be accepted as such, whereas Rachel Dolezal commit- more broadly, Anglo-Saxon/core countries) developments of aca- ted something morally intolerable by identifying as black. Brubaker demic and activist discourses and practices on gender are still un- attempts to disentangle this debate and “provide new analytical re- der-researched. sources for understanding the contingency and arbitrariness of ra- cial categories, while remaining sensitive to the ways in which gen- The so-called Jenner-Dolezal controversy from 2015 is highly rele- der and race operate as different systems of embodied difference” vant in the post-socialist region and possesses an explanatory pow- (151). er which can help us understand the practices of right-wing, and growingly anti-democratic, forces. The book is a good entry point for those acquainted with the main concepts rather used in social sciences, but without a working Rogers Brubaker, a sociologist known for his decades-long scholar- knowledge of either the US debates or gender and race studies. It ship on race, ethnicity and nationalism analyses this case in his book provides a calm and systematic analysis of a phenomenon of which published in 2016. the Jenner-Dolezal controversy is only the surface. The text can be helpful both for those who pursue the developments of social justice Several days after the former Olympic champion Bruce Jenner came activism with sympathy and those who are worried, overtly critical out as transgender and officially changed her name to Caitlyn Jen- or just intellectually unsatisfied by calls for more empathy as argu- ner, she was presented on the cover of Vanity Fair, marking a turning ments to accept certain intellectual and political position. The book point in transgender visibility. At approximately the same time, Ra- allows the reader to take a step back from their own political posi- chel Dolezal, the black-identifying and black-presenting president tions and offers them a mirror - how these activisms and political of one of the branches of the NAACP8 was “outed” as white by her struggles look from the outside to a sociologist, who is himself sym- parents. The simultaneity of the two cases prompted a controversy pathetic towards the justice claims and claimants, and knows and in the US as to whether or not the two cases were similar, and if ei- refers extensively to the transgender studies literature, but dares to ther of them could identify as they like. The debate was thus about point out several contradictions. 5 Ruzha Smilova, “Promoting ‘Gender Ideology’: Constitutional Court of Bulgaria Declares Istan- bul Convention Unconstitutional,” Oxford Human Rights Hub (August 22, 2018). https://ohrh.law. The Trans Moment ox.ac.uk/promoting-gender-ideology-constitutional-court-of-bulgaria-declares-istanbul-con- vention-unconstitutional. The Convention’s definitions and approach takes the two biological sexes for granted, see “3. c) ‘gender’ shall mean the socially constructed roles, behaviors, The volume uses the Jenner-Dolezal affair as an intellectual oppor- 125 activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men”; the Bulgarian judges ruled that the Convention’s text is ambiguous. tunity to reflect on changes that have happened on how we think 6 Roman Kuhar and David Paternotte (Eds.), Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against of race. Brubaker’s starting point is that the reflections and schol- Equality (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017). 7 Mary Anne Case, “Trans Formations in the Vatican’s War on ‘Gender Ideology,’” Signs: Journal of arship produced on transgenderism are potentially useful for pro- Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 44. No. 3 (2019), 639-63. ducing new knowledges on race too. The book is divided into two 8 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.